A man known as ‘Mr Kingston General’ has been recalling his memories of Hull’s first NHS hospital.

Mike Hebblewhite, now 85, became the first nursing student to work with long-term patients at the old hospital in Beverley Road, long before it closed down at the turn of the century.

Mr Hebblewhite, who was even awarded an MBE by the Queen for services to nursing, played a significant role in the progression of care for older people in Hull – right up until he finally retired in 1996.

Having seen many changes during his 40 years of service to the NHS, he has described the huge difference between the health service of the 1950s and what the public recognise today.

“My first three months in the job were spent washing lockers in the sluice room, cleaning and emptying bedpans and spittoons, changing and making beds,” he said. “It was superb grounding.

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“We were there for their families too and if someone told us they had an appointment on a day their mother wasn’t due to come to the centre, we’d arrange for them to come to us for an extra day.”

Around the time Mr Hebblewhite started his health care career, patients were institutionalised for conditions such as epilepsy, terminal syphilis and disabilities and it was not uncommon for people to spend decades in hospital until they died.

Mike Hebblewhite in 1994 to mark the 150-year celebration of Kingston General Hospital (Image: Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust)

In the geriatric unit where he worked, as a staff nurse and then a charge nurse, patients often died on a 44-bed ward filled with open fires and huge cot beds – it did not even have a day room for terminally ill patients to try and relax in.

He was working with some of Hull’s sickest patients who were suffering with long-term chronic conditions after moving to the job at the former Sculcoates Workhouse, which had recently become Kingston General Hospital.

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Fast-forward to 1992, he returned to Kingston General as site co-ordinator for the newly formed Royal Hull Hospitals Trust where he stayed until his retirement four years later – a very different world to the once he walked into four decades earlier.

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